The Young and the Restless (often abbreviated as Y&R) is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City, which is unlike and unrelated to the real life village of the same name, Genoa City, Wisconsin.[2] First broadcast on March 26, 1973, The Young and the Restless was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week.[3][4] The show expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4, 1980.[5] In 2006, the series began airing encore episodes weeknights on SOAPnet[6] until 2013, when Y&R moved to TVGN (now Pop). Pop still airs the encore episodes on weeknights, starting July 1, 2013.[7][8] The series is also syndicated internationally.[9]